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When Nelson Algren died on May 9, 1981, he was near-broke, living in a ramshackle rental home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and all alone. Not a fitting farewell for a writer Ernest Hemingway once rated second only to William Faulkner as America's greatest novelist. Apart from the Tribune's short story prize bearing his name, Algren has lived in the literary shadows for the last forty years. At one low point in his life, Algren told author Kurt Vonnegut that he was "the penny whistle of American literature." Such neglect seems an inconceivable fate for the writer of a dozen or so books, five of which — "Never Come Morning" (1942), "The Neon...

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When Nelson Algren died on May 9, 1981, he was near-broke, living in a ramshackle rental home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and all alone. Not a fitting farewell for a writer Ernest Hemingway once rated second only to William Faulkner as America's greatest...

The Chicago Tribune's Algren Awards contest is nearing its deadline.
This nationally recognized contest for original short fiction, named in honor of the Chicago literary great Nelson Algren, is accepting entries until the deadline of 11:59 p.m. Jan. 31,...

Bill Hillmann's "The Old Neighborhood" is about coming up the hard way on the streets of Chicago. It's about growing up in a place where all the choices seem bad. It's about a world where problems are solved with fists and bullets rather than...

"One bite of that, and he'll build you a Taj Mahal," a woman is heard hollering approvingly through an open window to her neighbor, a pretty young housewife named Ila who is in her kitchen, preparing her husband's lunch. "The Taj Mahal is a...

Ben Hoffman was just a handful of rejection letters away from giving up on writing before he ever really started. About five years ago, after a stint teaching seventh- and eighth-graders through Teach For America in Washington, D.C., Hoffman, 30,...

On a Saturday afternoon that dripped with sticky June heat, author Ben Hoffman and his groomsmen readied for his impending nuptials in the West Loop by basking in his hotel suite's air conditioning and a few moments of tranquility, a respite from the...

In 1985, Chicago's tempo was changing. Both politically and culturally, the city on the make was on the move.
Harold Washington, marking two years in office, was weathering the intense difficulties that came with being the city's first African-American...

Art Shay, who has spent his career documenting the lives of others, is now the subject of a documentary himself.
Milwaukee filmmaker Ken Hanson says he and his collaborators are about 10 months into the project about the renowned Chicago-based...

"Make no little plans" long has been the mantra of this city, a common justification for our hubristic plans for the skyline or lakefront, often trumping fiscal prudence. But between 11 o'clock in the morning and 11 at night on Sunday, a stretch...

His shadow is a substantial thing, shading the increasingly active and ever-expanding Chicago comedy world in the same way that Louis Sullivan still influences young architects, Muddy Waters impacts bluesmen or Nelson Algren whispers to writers.
Del...

Erika Schmidt has come a long way since "The Island of Doughnut Hole Lake," her first full-length story written in collaboration with a fourth grade classmate. That illustrated piece, inspired by Scott O'Dell's "Island of the Blue...

Bob Katzman of Bob Katzman's Magazine Museum in Skokie first called last summer.
He really wanted a story, he explained, because, well, he had such a great story to tell: He had 140,000 magazines and newspapers, flags from around the world, buttons...

In the story of the proposed American Writers Museum, we've had the prologue and the introduction. Now comes the long-awaited Chapter One, with the unveiling last week of plans for the museum's "First Edition," the inaugural stage in the...

He captured my attention with his resonant short story "Vigilance," about a father who is summoned by the police to answer questions about his missing child. With his new novel, Ethan Hauser fulfills the promise of his story, which was a...

It's one thing to be famous. It's quite another to be notorious, which is defined as "widely and unfavorably known." Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, Sandi, demonstrated that last week when they were sentenced for financial crimes. Here are 10...

This column originally ran in the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 21, 2011.
Some years ago when I was new to Chicago, I spotted Roger Ebert in the frozen-foods aisle of a grocery store. He was famous by then, and I did what any normal person does at the sight of...

From his stove, Nelson Algren saw a dark shape stumble out of the bar across Wabansia Avenue. It teetered once, then slumped under the Nectar Beer sign, sizzling neon in the bitter February cold. Eight degrees, an army fatigue jacket, and too many shots...

And they said the gentle art of literary criticism was dead, confined to irrelevance. Not this week, gentle reader. Not in Chicago. Not in the heat of L'affaire de Shteir. What book review in the history of Chicago literature — heck, what recent book...

In Thomas Dyja's cultural history of Chicago, "The Third Coast," he writes that in Nelson Algren's day, "being Chicago's Famous Writer was like winning the heavyweight title — there was only one at a time, and you kept the belt for as...